Question

Directions

  

Read Management Focus 8-1: Switched Backbone at Indiana University, Figure 8-4 illustrates the university's network design. What other alternatives do you think Indiana University considered? Why do you think they did what they did? Provide a thoughtful and informative response to the questions; you should be able to support your recommendations. Be sure to support your ideas with evidence gathered from reading the text or other outside sources. Be sure to give credit to the sources where you find evidence. Use an attribution like "According to the text," or "According to Computer Weekly website" in your response. Your response should be a minimum of 200 words.

  

Respond to at least one of your classmates' posting. Your response should at a minimum of 100 words. A response like "I agree" or "Yes, you are correct" does not contribute to a robust discussion. Explain why you agree or disagree; share our own personal experience or knowledge gained from your readings.

  

Submit this assignment in the Discussion Board

Figure 8-4 on this book ---> http://library.alexingram.net/Business%20Data%20Communications%20and%20Networking%20(13th%20Edition)%20%5BFitzgerald%2C%20Dennis%2C%20Durcikova%5D.pdf

Answer 1

A backbone network is defined as a network containing a high capacity connectivity infrastructure that forms the main link or backbone to the different parts of the network. The network consists on various LANs, WANs and sub networks. The connectivity may cover a local area within a building or vicinity or may have a global access that spans wide geographical areas. The backbone has a capacity that far exceeds that of the individual networks connected to it. as we read on the text book “switched back bone is the most common type of backbone used in distribution layer today”

Indiana university made the design based on switched backbone architecture. I think they did it because they were using low budget and the cost assessment was low and Backbone has clear segments.

If I was the project manager,other alternative is, the first thing I would do move all switches to one place instead having them in every floor. I would put in my consideration other way VLAN, it will connect all computers to keep all computer everywhere under one subnet, and faster and we have learned that” VLANs are networks in which computers are assigned to Lan segments by software rather than by hardware. “

I think Indiana University could considered this alternative.